2005 Recycling Pilot Program Report

Home

Materials Recovered and Contamination An important part of the recycling loop is that material sei out by residents is made into new products. There are hundreds of Minnesota manufacturers who use recycled material to make new items. Those companies rely on a steady, reliable stream of quality recycled material (Brian Larsen, Bedford Technalogies; Tom Troskey, Rock Tenn — Presentation at 2005 Mi�z�esota Air, Water & Waste Conference, February lb, 2005). Manufacturers routinely have to remove some contaminants from their bales of recycled materia�. Each industry has its own standards for how much contamination is acceptable, but it is only a small percent of the bale weight. There are two main sources of contaminants in finished bales: other recyclable materials that vvere not properly separated at the materials recovery facility, and non-recyclab�e rxxaterial collected with recyclable material that is not properly sepa.rated a# the recovery facility. Examples of the later are non- targeted plastics such as margarine tubs and cardboard boxes for frozen foods. Those contaminants increase costs to manufacturers because the compaxues have to pay to dispose of the contaminants (usually in the trash) and to buy more recycled materiai to compensate for the Ioss. If manufacturers have to pay more for their raw materials they may have to iticrease the price of their finished product. Increasing prices can put manufacturers who use recycled material at a competitive disadvantage compared to manufacturers who use virgin materiai because many consumers base their buying choices primarily on price. As mentioned earlier, this study wanted to Iook at educational materials that would help residents put more of the wanted rnaterials out for coilection and more ofthe unwanted materials in the garbage. This study also wanted to examine if colIection methods xnight influence the amount of unwanted rnaterial put oui for collection. An issue raised with commingled dual-stream and single-strearr� collection is the degree to which they result in �naterial being collected that is not ultimately zx�ade inta a manufactured product. Such contarnination or residuals falls into three categories: ■ Non-targeted materials, at the curb: Materials that are defined by the municipality as not acceptable but are sometimes included by residents in their curbside bins, such as film plastic and beer/pop/water boxes. ■ Processing residuals, at the facility: Maierials that are disposed as trash as ar� unwanted by-product after processing of recyclable materials at MRFs, such as dirt, residue in containers, and items contaminated to the point of rendering them non-marketable. ■ Contaminants in marketed product, at the mill: Inclusion of materials that are prohibited or which exceed speciiications for an end-market. For example, glass is a prohibited contaminant in most end nnarkefi specifications for nevc�spaper bales from recovered paper suppliers. Regarding glass, in addition to any potential contamination of recovered paper, there is an ongoing debate about glass tliat is broken during the collection and processing of commingled materials that cannot be separated by color for recycling back into glass bottles. Such glass pieces may instead be used for lower value uses, such as alternative daily cover at landfills, raisiz�g the question as to whether some of those uses should be treated as recycling or disposal. To measure what is in th� recycling collecied at the curb Roseville conducted material composition sorts as part of this pilot program. 11